NL 303: God Works through Joseph

image: wikimedia

image: wikimedia

Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34; 50:15- 21

Initial Thoughts

  • To read or not to read all 28 verses or to not read?

Bible Study

  • Robert Alter on Joseph:

    • “It is noteworthy that Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph is mentioned immediately after the report of questionable behavior on Joseph’s part. One recalls that Jacob was the object of his mother’s unexplained favoritism.” (p 139)

    • He wore an “ornamented tunic…. It is a unisex garment and a product of ancient haute culture… Other scholars have pointed to a fourteenth century BCE Egyptian fresco showing captive Canaanite noblemen adorned with tunics made of longitudinal panels sewed together.” (p 139)

  • Joseph and Jacob

    • Both dreamers

    • Both have “brother issues”

    • Jacob deceives his father, Jacob’s sons deceive him

  • Dreams

    • interpreted negatively by the brothers and father as a threat to their status and power - not interpreted by Jacob at all

    • “At the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, worship begins with the opening sentences: ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams’ (vv. 19-20 KJV). The effect is chilling.” - Patrick Wilson, Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 3

  • The Brothers

    • 12 Brothers will become 12 tribes

    • Joseph is sent to his brothers to check on their shalom (well-being)

    • Joseph usually did not go into the field and gave “bad reports”(v.2)

    • There is clearly no shalom between the brothers (v.4)

    • Jacob is not fool when it comes to inter-brother discord

  • The “Killing” and “Flinging”

    • Trying to overcome the dream (basis for so many stories)

      • Oedipus

      • Heroes

      • Lost

    • Two traditions: Reuben and the Ishmaelites and Judah and the Midianites - two tellings of the same stories

      • Both Reuben and Judah are portrayed as the merciful brothers.

    • “The flinging after the killing underscores the naked brutality of the brothers’ intentions. The denial of proper burial was among the Hebrews, as among the Greeks, deeply felt as an atrocity.” (Robet Alter, The Hebrew Bible: The Five Books of Moses, p. 141)

  • Favoritism and Chosenness

    • At the center of God’s interactions with God’s people

    • How does being chosen manifest itself?

    • Privilege and responsibility

    • Helps to have tact...Joseph did not have any (yet)

    • While Jacob will receive his father’s blessing, he will not become a patriarch - God will remain the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not Joseph.

  • God

    • Is never mentioned - but it does not mean that God is not present

    • Terence Fretheim, NIB: Genesis - “God works in and through even the worst that this family can perpetrate; in everything - even evil - God works for good...The reader will be tempted to fall into one ditch or another in interpreting this dialectic: either divine determinism where God fully controls events, or deism, where God must simply make do with whatever human action turns up and acts with no independent initiative. Neither of these options fully grasps the theological perspective that governs the story.”

    • "I believe that God can and will let good come out of everything, even the greatest evil.... I believe that even our mistakes and shortcomings are not in vain and that it is no more difficult for God to deal with them than with our supposedly good deeds.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 46.

  • From Africana Bible, Genesis article by Rodney Sadler:

    • From the Color Purple, by Alice Walker “Today the people of Africa - having murdered or sold into slavery their strongest folks - are riddled with disease and sunk in spiritual physical confusion… Why did they sell us? And why do we still love them?”

    • “Joseph’s story echoes the stories of many of our ancestors, for they found themselves similarly enslaved. It was their African brothers who sold them into slavery… Nettie’s words above to her sister about the Africana people among whom she was to minister provide a glimpse into the mind of Joseph. These are likely his own unasked questions as he would have pondered his own  plight and struggled to make sense of his own brothers’ disdain that led them to sell him into slavery. Why did they sell him? Why does he still love them?” (p.77)

    • “African Americans have sought to reconcile their enslavement with a vision of a benevolent deity. When asked to reflect on the reason for the passion of Africans in the Americas, late-nineteenth-century Ethiopianists often mirrored Joseph’s response that it was God’s will… the conclusion is that through our collective sufferings, God had blessings in store for all humanity, including those very brothers who ‘sold us out’ in the most literal of senses.” (p. 78)

    • “At the end of the day, their suffering will serve a higher purpose in a plan they are at a loss to explain. In this regard, the Joseph novella provides the basis of a theology of hope for those desperately groping for God’s hand in the midst of the overwhelming darkness of human inhumanity.” (p. 78)

  • John Wesley sees this story as analogous to a sinner coming to Christ.  Joseph is put into God’s place, joyful for the reunion despite the misdeeds of the brothers.

    • “These were tears of tenderness and strong affection, and with these he threw off that austerity, with which he had hitherto carried himself towards his brethren; for he could bear it no longer. This represents the Divine compassion towards returning penitents, as much as that of the father of the prodigal” (Wesley’s Notes on the Bible)

    • “Now Joseph having forgiven them all, lays this obligation upon them, not to upbraid one another. This charge our Lord Jesus has given to us, that we love one another, that we live in peace, that whatever occurs, or whatever former occurrences are remembered, we fall not out. For,

  1. We are brethren, we have all one father.

  2. We are his brethren; and we shame, our relation to him, who is our peace, if we fall out.

  3. We are all guilty, verily guilty, and instead of quarrelling with one another, have a great deal of reason to fall out with ourselves.

  4. We are forgiven of God, whom we have all offended, and therefore should be ready to forgive one another.

  5. We are by the way, a way that lies through the land of Egypt, where we have many eyes upon us, that seek occasion and advantage against us; a way that leads to Canaan, where we hope to be forever in perfect peace.” (Wesley’s Notes on the Bible)

    • We are to follow the lead of Joseph, and forgive others because we were first forgiven.

  • Story of forgiveness is powerful, but might gloss over a troubling aspect of the story, that is - Human trafficking was used by God as a means to justify an end.

    • God’s use of slavery in the story has been used to justify real slave trafficking in history - and still.

    • “The claim of verse 8, ‘it was not you who sent me here but God’ should perhaps be understood in this story as Joseph's perception of his circumstances and not as a broader religious sanction of slavery, human trafficking or any other social ill over which an individual triumphs. Joseph does what so many people do, which is try to make sense out of what he has experienced by drawing on his own limited understanding of God.” (Wil Gafney, Working Preacher).

    • It would be very troubling, indeed, to claim that God wills the trafficking of humanity for some kind of universal good.

    • It is Joseph who comes to an understanding of what has befallen him, not God telling Joseph that it was God’s will for Joseph to be in slavery.

    • The story is good news for Joseph and his brothers, but not particularly good news for those still trapped in the horrifying institution of slavery, nor for the other prisoners who were summarily executed at the whim of the Pharaoh.

    • In fact, Pharaoh is portrayed somewhat favorably, despite being a despot, because there is a happy ending. 

  • The Suffering of God, by Terrence Freitheim

    • “The grief of God is as constant as the people’s sin.  This divine grief manifests itself in a variety of ways in the life of the people, as God in many and various ways seeks to bring the wayward sons and daughters back home again.” (p. 111).

    • God suffers through human frailty, but still works through the frailty.  God is not omnipotent - controlling and willing all action.  God’s love is omnipresent - working, yearning, compelling people to orient themselves toward God, toward love.

  • The end is important, for the scars never truly heal - looking ahead to next week’s passover story

    • After the death of Jacob, they go back to Canaan to bury him

    • Upon return, the brothers fear that finally Joseph will get his revenge.

    • “‘Fear not, for am I instead of God? While you meant evil toward me, God meant it for good, so as to bring about at this very time keeping many people alive. And so fear not. I will sustain you and your little ones.’ And he comforted them and spoke to their hearts.” (Genesis 50:19-21, The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter, p. 201)

    • “The book that began with an image of God’s breath moving across the vast expanses of the primordial deep to bring the world and all life into being ends with this image of a body in a box, a mummy in a coffin… Out of the contraction of this moment of mortuary enclosure, a new expansion, and new births, will follow. Exodus begins with a proliferation of births, a pointed repetition of the primeval blessing to be fruitful and multiply, and just as the survival of the Flood was represented as a second creation, the leader who is to forge the creation of the nation will be borne on the water in a little box - not the coffin of the end of Genesis, but ‘the ark’ that keeps Noah and his seed alive.” (Genesis 50:19-21, The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter, p. 201)

Thoughts and Questions

  • A message of hope- contrary to all human will and actions- faith hope and love win. Contrary to all outside perceptions- Sarah can’t conceive, Isaac will be sacrificed, Esau wants to kill Jacob, Jacob is stuck away from the promised land, Joseph is sold into slavery, - God is working within all things and lovingly calling creation to a eschatological kingdom of justice and peace.

  • The 12 brothers represent the 12 tribes of Israel. The 11 “bad brothers” will not be punished for their misdeeds or cast out of the circle of blessing

  • God’s will.  What is the difference between God working through sinful people and sinful events, and God using sinful events to achieve a good? Is it too subtle of a difference?  Is there anything redeemable about a God that will allow slavery so that a family can have a happy ending?  What about a God that can work even through something as awful as slavery to bring about forgiveness, reconciliation, and grace.

Year 3Eric FistlerGenesisComment